About The Teacher
Rick Ellis is a professional guitar teacher with over 25 years of experience in teaching people of all ages and abilities to play the guitar.He is a very patient teacher with great teaching, motivational and communication skills. Rick utilizes proven teaching methods and personalized lesson plans that he individually tailors to each student. Rick maintains a friendly and open teaching atmosphere and he makes himself available between lessons by telephone to help his students or answer any questions at no additional charge.
Rick takes great pride in his ability to communicate clearly with his students. He supplements his oral instructions with lots of detailed written instructional information as well as step by step hands-on demonstration. Rick has been playing the guitar for many years, but he remembers what it was like when he was learning to play the guitar. With this in mind, Rick has developed some very exceptional ways of breaking down and simplifying complicated musical elements into smaller parts that are much easier for students to understand and apply to their knowledge of music theory and guitar playing skills.
Rick mentors his students and takes a personal interest in each guitar student’s development as a musician. Many of Rick's former students have gone on to achieve success in the music industry.
Unlike teachers with limited teaching experience or whose qualifications may be questionable, Rick's reputation and success as a teacher is measured by his record of successfully teaching people to play the guitar. Remember that just because a person is a good guitarist, it in no way means they are qualified to teach others to play the guitar. Rick worked hard for many years developing his skills and techniques as a professiona guitarist. He has also spent thousands of hours over the course of more than twenty-five years developing and honing guitar and music theory teaching skills, methods and techniques, acquiring excellent communication skills and fine tuning presentation methods that will hold the students attention for an hour every week by keeping lessons interesting, enjoyable and fun.Rick is recognized as an excellent professional guitarist, but more importantly, he is also recognized as an excellent professional guitar teacher.
No two people are alike when it comes to learning to play the guitar and a good guitar teacher cannot rely on generic lesson plans that will work for every student. Rick has theknowledge and experience necessary to readily evaluate a persons learning abilities as well as limitations. His evaluation will be based on, among other things, natural talent, motivation, goals, dedication, self-discipline, time, attention span, small motor control in the hands, dexterity and coordination. The results of Rick's evaluation of each student provides him with the information that he needs to tailor or custom fit lessons plans to each individual student.
Rick knows that there is so much more to teaching than just instruction and training. A guitar teacher will teach a student a skill or an element of music theory in a weekly lesson. Then it is up to the student to take that information and learn the skill or element during practice sessions between lessons. Rick knows how to keep a student motivated and he knows how to help a student deal with the frustration, self-doubt and lack of confidence which affects nearly every beginning guitar player during the first few weeks of guitar lessons.
Musical Background
Rick Ellis is a songwriter, composer, musician, poet, author, performer and guitar teacher with over twenty-five years of music industry experience.
Rick's reputation as a virtuoso guitarist and multi-instrumentalist has led to considerable session work over the years, both on stage and in the studio, with many artists representing a wide range of musical genres. More recently, Rick’s musical focus, outside of teaching, has been on songwriting, recording, publishing and licensing his music for use in motion pictures and television. Rick recorded his first album of original music, Corporate Ethics (Surf City Records), in 1998. In 1999 he recorded Perry’s Lantern (Independent Production) followed by an acoustic album, Cardboard Boxes (Winterwood Productions) in the spring of 2000. For the last few years, as time permits, Rick has been recording tracks for a, still untitled, fourth album of original songs as well as a blues album.
From the time he was a toddler, Rick has had the ability to pick up almost any kind of musical instrument and play it to one extent or another. Rick's father and grandfather, who were both very accomplished musician's, started teaching Rick piano and music lessons when he was nine years old. Rick discovered the blues when he was just twelve years old after he started listening to his dad's records. Shortly after that he bought his first harmonica and an around the neck holder. He spent hours every day playing blues on the piano and blowing harp like an old pro. His father and grandfather took Rick with them to blue's jam's around San Diego where at the age of just thirteen. the blonde hair, blued eyed surfer from Coronado began knocking the socks off of even some of the local, long time bluesmen. Rick started playing the guitar when he was seventeen and he has never looked back. His natural ability and talent, background in piano, years of music lessons, his love for the blue's and countless hours of daily practice all played important roles in his learning to play the guitar, which he soon developed a deep love for. Rick was then, as he is today, extremely passionate about the guitar. Ever since the first time he picked up a guitar he has been devoted to mastering the instrument.
Rick wrote his first song when he was thirteen years old and has been actively writing songs ever since. He first began perfoming his own songs on stage as a member of The House Of Commons when he was seventeen. He paid his dues and sharpened his songwriting and guitar playing skills over many years, playing in bands, duo's, trio's and as a solo singer/songwriter.
Teaching, session work and his own music projects left little time for Rick to devote to playing in a band, so in 2001 he backed off from performing and has focused his music al talents on teaching, session work and songwriting, as well as recording, publishing and licensing his music.
Rick lives in Huntington Beach, California
